The Normalized Curriculum Vitae (CVN) / Currículum Vitae Normalizado

The CVN Project was launched in 2006 by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT). CVN is a strategic project for the creation of a common space for the integration and exchange of curricular information of researchers. The systematized collection of the scientific knowledge, experience and production of every person that participates in the activities of research, innovation, teaching and technological development is available in different kinds of digital storage format.

Báez et al. (2008) define Curricula Vitae (CV) of researchers as “documents that collect data on individuals, institutions and works and, seen as a whole, are a potential source of inside information about the scientific activity of a country. But if they are not stored properly, it is not possible to conduct studies on them” (our translation).

It goes without saying that it is easier to manage a scientific system if it is well structured and integrated. If we apply this idea to the study of scientific research through the analysis of researchers´ CVs, it is only common sense that we need a homogeneous CV format in order to make the process of extracting data from the CVs easier.

At the same time, each researcher could record the data concerning his or her scientific career in the same way, i.e. following the same patterns and structure. Such a recurrent structure could be useful for easily locating the data when needed and making the document simple and clear to the reader.

Furthermore, when it comes to extracting information from these CVs for further analysis, having the information structured makes the process of locating important contents within the document easier and more efficient.

For all these reasons, there has been an institutional effort to design a standard CV format in order to create a defined structure that would make it easy to generate and modify a CV, as well as locate and extract useful information. Some examples of such formats are the Mets Schemas, Europass, and CVN.

CVN is a project whose aim is designing a normalized CV format in order to provide the scientific community with a common space for the integration and exchange of curricular information of researchers. The idea is to convert the standardized CVN information into a database which would be available to the researchers and which they could search. In this way, we would provide the R&D community with a shared repository of technological information accessible and available to potential users, as a return on their contribution to supporting research. (http://cvn.fecyt.es/ )

CVN has been designed to offer a standardized CV format that is capable of updating, modelling and integrating every CV format that currently exists. As a result, there is no need for researchers to collect information and create new CVs whenever they have to share professional information with different agents or R&D systems. What is more, CVN provides a CV format for content-scalable information transfer adapted to the profile and needs of each researcher.

CVN makes use of the technology and methodology developed by a large group of experts that represent all fields and entities of the Spanish Science, Technology and Enterprise System (SECTE).

CVN allows research organisations with different curricular information systems to be interconnected and exchange information. The CVN is intended to become a basic instrument for the exchange of curricular information with the aim of facilitating the management of public and private R&D grants and projects in all organisations within the SECTE.